PASSION: “Any powerful or compelling emotion or feeling, as love or hate.”
“You may think you know me . . . but, you don’t know me at all.”
For the past 24 years, the name Vince Russo has been synonymous with the world of professional wrestling/sports-entertainment. From being credited to founding the WWE “Attitude Era” of the late 90’s, to single-handedly causing the inevitable fall of WCW, everything has been said about me that could possibly be said about one person.
However, through the constant turmoil, I tried to tell anyone that would listen, that being the head writer for three different wrestling companies wasn’t necessarily my passion; in other words I’m not trading in MLB TV for the WWE Network any time soon. And despite the thousands of personal attacks that were hurled at me by the “so-called” experts, I can proudly say that at no point did I neither hate it. A strong dislike, maybe, but never really hate. The business was my job, the way I supported my family, and I was good at it, and I gave it my all, but never once did it “obsess” me.
Why is it that your passion is always the thing, or things, that you have very little time for? Why are our passions, for whatever reason, always pushed to the back burner, when they are truly at the core of what we love, or hate.
You would never know my passions because you don’t know me. Writing episodic television for a good 17 years wasn’t “fun”. Quite honestly, it sucked at times. With the exception of a handful, very few truly understand the challenge of filling a blank sheet of paper for 52 weeks out of the year, for stars who for a good amount of the time were extremely unappreciative, not to mention the “hardcore” fans. That’s why very few have held the position, because only very few could handle it.
Beating Tommy Dreamer and Simon Diamond in the TNA Fantasy Baseball League, now that gets me excited. Swapping Ralph Kramden lines at Universal Studios with Taz, yeah, that was a lot of fun. Watching Rocky Balboa set his entitled son straight on the streets of Philadelphia brings a freakin’ tear to my eye every time. Memories of watching Barry Bonds crush baseballs, going to see “Rhianna” with my 18 year-old daughter and knowing just as many lyrics as she does, watching Tenacious D from every front row I possibly can, getting a kick out of watching 50 year-old metal heads “Stump the Trunk” on “That Metal Show”, anticipating how Joe Carroll is going to screw with Ryan Hardy this week, scanning TMZ and getting my daily vomit on by today’s Kimye story, Egghead . . . God . . . family . . . Yogi. . . yeah . . . these are just a few of my favorite things.
Life should be as simple as that. Screw the things that suck in our lives, if one of them happens to be your job, then just go out there and suck it up until you’re allowed to go home. But once you’re home, go down to your man cave, sit in that La-Z-Boy and fruitfully enjoy your passions, whatever they may be. That’s what life is really about.
Since this will be my last column for Wrestlezone, I just want to thank them for the opportunity, and thank all of you for reading my words.
Peace Out.
(You can follow Vince on RELMNetwork.com, or go to vincerussobrand.com)
Note from Nick Paglino: WZ would like to thank Vince Russo for his contributions to the site and we certainly hope you have enjoyed reading his weekly submissions!
